explores the relationships words have with each other withina language system,theirsense, that can be defined in terms ofsynonymy, antonymy, polysemy, homonymy

and hyponymy.

As we remember from Saussure’s theory, since the relationship between words and theirreferents

is merely symbolic–

they aresigns

–

each word derives ameaning not from the realworld but from its existence within asemantic field

of related signs.

At theword level,Componentialanalysisbreaks down the meaning of a word into components.For example the components of the wordman

would be: +human + adult + male. Using thesecomponents semanticists build grids which define the words of a particular field according to thepresence or absence of a particular component.

Of course, grammatical words such asand, but, for

do not lend themselves to this analysis. But,above all, the components mentioned could be endlessly broken down into smaller ones. So thismethod can be useful as a means of classification but not as a theory of meaning.

At thesentence level, semanticists are mainly concerned with thetruthvalue

of linguisticexpressions.

They frequently distinguish betweenanalyticandsynthetictruth. A synthetically true statementis true because it is an accurate representation of reality. An analytically true statement is truebecause it follows from the meaning relations within the sentence.

Logical semantics

orTruth conditional semantics

draws

mainly on propositional logic and isinterested above all in thelogical connectivesof English.

This kind of analysis implies acorrespondencebetween language and

reality, but somesemanticists do not believe in this correspondence and argue that languagecreates

reality.

Cognitive semantics

sees language as part of our general cognitive ability and pays specialattention

tometaphor.

SENSE

RELATIONS

Antonymy

is a sense relation between words which are opposite in meaning.

There are various forms of antonymy.

3

In

gradable

antonyms

there can be degrees of opposition (wide/narrow, old/young/, tall/short). Inthis case the definition changes according to thereferent

and there is usually amarked

(young) andandun-markedterm (old ex. She is 16 years old).

Incomplementary antonyms

the opposition between the terms

is absolute (alive/dead).

Relational antonyms

are not either/or but there is a logical relationship between them(above/below,husband/wife)

Homonymy

is a relation between words which have the same form but unrelatedsenses.

Homonymscan have the same phonological or graphical form, or both. If they have the samephonological form they are calledhomophones

(sight/site). If they have the same graphical formthey are calledhomographs

(lead

: leash, metal). Some of them are both homophonic andhomographic (mail).

Polysemy

is a sense relation in which a word, orlexeme, has acquired more than one

meaning(flight), often because ofits

metaphorical use or becauseit

can refer to abstract or concrete referents(thesis).

Sometimes homonymy is difficult to distinguish from polysemy, but in fact homonyms are separatelexical items which happen to havethe same form, while in the case of polysemy the same lexicalitem has taken up more than one sense. One possibility is to take etymology as a criterion todistinguish them, but it does not always work (sole), so maybe the best approach is to look for acommon core of

Meaning (common semes).

The sign is composed of a signifier, which is the perceivable part of the sign (for example, theletterss-h-i-p) and a signified, which is the semantic content associated with the signifier (forexample, the meaning of the word "ship"). The signified may be broken down into semes. Forexample,'ship' contains semes such as /navigation//concrete/, etc.

An isotopy is formed by repeating one seme. For example, in "There was a fine ship, carved fromsolid gold / With azure

reaching masts, on seas unknown", the words "ship", "masts" and "seas" allcontain the seme /navigation/ (as well as others) and thus create the isotopy /navigation/.

Hyponymy

is a hierarchical relation between two terms, in which

the sense of one is included in theother [rose (hypomym) /flower (hypernym)]

Co-hyponymsare hyponyms of the same hypernym (rose, lily, daisy) and areincompatible

(a rosecannot be a lily)

There can be various levels of hyponymy (Living things→

(Animal)/ Vegetable→

Flower→Rose/Lily/Daisy/ Poppy etc)

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Synonymy

is a relation between words which have a similar meaning (mad/insane,main/chief/principal). English is particularly rich in synonyms because of the influx on it of variouslanguages such

as Latin, French and Anglo-Saxon.

In fact, words are never totally interchangeable, so synonyms frequently differstylistically, theybelong to different language registers (mother/mom) or can be combined only with certain otherwords, that is they have a

collocational range

(powerful, mighty, strong)

SEMANTIC FIELD

Asemantic fieldis an area of meaning containing words with related senses. According to thistheory, meanings of words cluster together to form fields of meaning which in turn clusterintolarger ones (Ex. veal/chicken/pork→meat→food).

Each meaning is defined by the space a wordoccupies in the field.

Semantic fields translate into lexical fields.

Field theory is very useful in the contrastive analysis of different languages (wood/glass/types ofkinship).

Some words can belong to different fields (polysemy)

METAPHOR

Metaphor

is a process in which onesemantic field

of reference is transferred to another.

The new field is generally referred to astargetortenor, the old one assource

orvehicle.

Exs. He made anass

of himself. Iron fist. Out, out brief candle.

Metaphor often involves theselection restrictions

on words. (he = + human)

Theclassicalview of metaphor sees it as a literary device, an addition to ordinary language.

Cognitive semanticists, instead, do not make this distinction and consider metaphor as a naturalfeature of language and a consequence of the way we think about the world (Lakoff and Johnson)and distinguish 3 types of metaphor:

-

Structural (we map one type

of experience onto another. A cold person)

-

Orientational (we spatialize experience. I feel down)

-

Ontological ( we categorize things and use prototypes rather than defining features).Ontological metaphors are used to understand events, actions and states.(I’m going to therace)